red750

American Civil War II is under way. BREAKING: Elon rehires Nazi hacker, moves him from the Department of Stealing Your Social Security to the State Department's most sensitive classified data. Elon is a straight up enemy of our nation and he's got full control of all the levers. Moments ago, a federal judge said the Trump administration is violating his order to restore funding to the agencies Elon is illegally sabotaging. The judge said he might hold the administration in contempt of court, while Trump, JD Vance, Elon and GOP leaders said they will target and replace any federal judge they do not like. We are in a full blown constitutional crisis. We're going to need to organize a national rebellion to stop the billionaires coup.

Elon moved the Nazi hacker to the State Department, where he now has access to the nation's most classified documents and secrets. This is a teenager who calls himself 'Big Balls' who was canned from his previous job for selling trade secrets to rivals. And here's Elon, secretly moving this guy around like Catholic bishops did with pedophile priests.

Our ISP is also TPG. It's my daughters account. She went on their website via an optus mobile wifi she has, and they reported that it was the severe storm in Sydney that put their system out.

For God's sake, how are they meant to refer to them? Like those transgenger nuts, THEM and THEY? You have seriuos issues. You need to see a doctor.

Bloody NBN went down at about 7 pm tonight. All our TV is through Foxtel via NBN so no TV. With atmospheric disturbance, free to air via antenna breaks up badly,unwatchable. I am on here via the personal hotspot on my phone.

With such a large number of candidates and so close a race, there is bound to be a recount anyway. What do you mean "favouritism"? Let's say there are 100,000 electors in an electorate. 45,000 LNP supporters, 46,000 ALP. That's 91,000. The other 9,000 support minor parties. Should their votes be discarded because their first preference had no hope of getting in? If 6,000 of them preferred LNP to Labor and 3,000 preferred Labor, given only two choices, most of the 100.000 preferred LNP. That's why our preferencial system is best.

Counting doesn't start till the polls are closed. Giving a running commetary cannot affect the result. While counting may commence in the eastern states while WA polls are still open, no progress figures are released until WA polls close.

GOn, do you understand what preferential voting is all about? Let's suppose Joe Bloggs votes for Clive Palmer. Clive is never going to get enough votes to form government. So he votes for the other candidates in his order of preference. If he prefers Labor over LNP, he gives them his second preference. That way, he doesn't get who he preferred, but he gets another opportunity to choose fron those who are left. So his vote is not totally wasted. So the second preference is added to the count of the party selected, then the third preferences are distributed , than the 4th and so on. It's like going to a shop to buy a pineapple ice cream. If they don't have pineapple, you have other choices., the most popular ones. You are not forced to have vanilla, you can choose another flavour. Without preferences, you would have to walk away without an icecream.

77 mm fell in 1 hour in Sydney today. Town Hall station under water, water cascading the steps.

Looks like Trump also put the moz on the Kansas City Chiefs, His tip for the Super Bowl.

Pressure is on the Albanese Government to secure a tariff exemption after President Donald Trump announced a 25 per cent tax on all steel and aluminium imports to the US. Trump announced the tariffs on imported metal would broadly apply without exemptions, during a media conference aboard Air Force One as he was flying to the Super Bowl in New Orleans.

This is what the world is coming to .....

Musk reinstates DOGE staffer who resigned over racist posts after JD Vance leads outcry https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/musk-reinstates-doge-staffer-who-resigned-over-racist-posts-after-jd-vance-leads-outcry/ar-AA1yBVVc

Pull the other one - it plays jingle bells. If you believe that you're a bigger fool than I thought you were.

5 MINUTES WITH PETER FITZSIMONS - SMH Sun Herald, Sunday 9 Feb. 2025 Middle East expert Dr Keith Suter says Trump’s Gaza plan contravenes the Geneva Convention and is illegal. Confounded by Trump’s Gaza folly? Let my uni professor enlighten you. Dr Keith Suter is a foreign policy expert of 50 years standing, with a special interest in the Middle East. His first degree was in international politics, international law and international economics. He has PhDs in international humanitarian law and the economics of the arms race. Fitz: Dr Suter, thank you for your time. I am hoping you will recall lecturing and tutoring me on Israel and Gaza at Sydney Uni 45 years ago. I remember you sometimes looking at me with the bemused expression of one who couldn’t quite believe he had to help a footballer who looked like he read Phantom comics with his lips moving, understand something so complex. Keith Sutter: (Laughing.) I do remember! I seek to use your expertise to help explain the situation in Gaza, historically and politically, before going into the latest Trumpian twist. To go to the core problem, you have two peoples claiming the one bit of land, historically a land they shared before the Jewish diaspora? Yes, in about 70AD, the Roman occupiers became thoroughly sick of the Jewish revolts and so destroyed the temples and scattered the Jews, some of whom remained in the Holy Land and others went elsewhere. Britain got control of Palestine after World War I from the destroyed Ottoman Empire and some Jews hoped to return. This Jewish return increased after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, and then became a flood after the Holocaust. Yes, and so the British were confronted with this huge influx of Jewish refugees, and there were tensions between them and the existing Palestinian population. To resolve the tension, the British said, ‘‘Well, let’s divide the land into two peoples and have two states.’’ And basically, it has been that formula which keeps being revived. But every time it gets revived, it’s a smaller amount of land for the Palestinians. So the Brits were the driving force for the establishment of Israel in 1948? I think the key driving force was the guilty conscience of the allied governments who had not done enough to save the Jews in World War II. And with the Jews still arriving, Israel declares itself as an independent country, and some of the Palestinians were driven off the Holy Land and fled into the area called Gaza. Negotiations on the two-state solution fail, until Hamas launches the shocking attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. And in response, Israel unleashes all hell on all of Gaza. One of the complaints about the Israeli reprisal for approximately 1200 of their citizens being killed is that it’s out of proportion – with about 50,000 Palestinians killed. Now that the authorities are getting access back into Gaza, they’re finding more and more bodies under the rubble and that’s why the figure continues to go up. And how do you characterise the previous approach of the Biden administration to restoring peace? Biden’s approach was simply to support Israel, whose own approach was to destroy Hamas. And that hasn’t worked. Israel’s aim to destroy Hamas has been effectively defeated in Gaza. Israel said it would eradicate Hamas and yet, look who’s been handling the transfer of prisoners [in the current truce]. It’s been Hamas in bright new vehicles, wearing new clean uniforms. Hamas is still in business. Israel did not destroy Hamas. It might have killed some of the ringleaders, but you’ve got others who are coming up through the ranks. And we know from the history of guerilla warfare that you kill one person, you end up with others deciding to become guerillas, to act in retaliation. Which brings us, finally, to the alternative Trump approach. It seems to have gone from the ‘‘two state’’ solution, to what effectively looks like a ‘‘51ststate’’ solution – America takes over to turn Gaza into, to quote Trump, ‘‘the Riviera of the Middle East’’. It seems to me a completely crazy idea that is appalling at every level. Is that fair or not? It’s not only a crazy idea, it’s illegal and immoral. It’s illegal in the sense that America can’t move in on any other country, be it Panama or Greenland or Gaza, and take it over without the invitation of the people concerned. They’d be no more than an occupying force. And it’s also immoral the way you’re going to be removing people from their own land. OK, Gaza is covered in rubble, but it is still the land of the Palestinians, and the phrase that is being used to describe the plan is ‘‘ethnic cleansing’’; removing the population from that area. So when you say that it is ‘‘illegal’’ is it not that in some ways the Middle East is also the Wild West, and if Trump has the most guns, and he says it is legal, then he can make it so? No, it contravenes Article 2.4 of the United Nations Charter and it contravenes the Geneva Conventions relating to victims of war and occupied territory – and America is a signatory of both. So it really is illegal, against the very international laws and treaties the US has promulgated. And of course, it’s immoral to take other people’s land without their consent. OK, but, call me crazy, let’s just say Trump ignores law and morality – a stretch, I know but, just go with me. Would it be remotely workable for the US to put boots on the ground, round up Gazans and move them off in every direction bar east? Where would it put them? Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia have said they won’t accept them. And the average Arab in the street would never want to see their own government cooperating with the Americans to remove the Palestinians from their land. There would be a revolt against their governments. Another problem is getting enough of the American military to take on that role because America has global responsibilities and has to be careful that it doesn’t overextend itself. America just doesn’t have a large enough standing army to be able to occupy Gaza. And remember, Trump has promised to pull America out of foreign wars, not get involved in new ones. So, beyond illegal and immoral, it’s completely unworkable and disastrous for America? Yes. Remember, empires generally die by suicide, not murder. They die through overextension, trying to do too much, rather than being killed off by the enemy. Look at Britain. It won two world wars, and yet it finished WWII bankrupt. The problem for the US is that it is so heavily committed to all of these defence arrangements around the globe, going into places like Gaza – not to mention the other targets of Greenland and the Panama Canal – even if they could, would be a classic overextension. Perhaps this is just ‘‘Trump being Trump,’’ full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? Well, what was interesting was, on Gaza, Trump was not just firing from the hip but reading from a written statement. That’s why we’re all shocked, right? It was a prepared statement, so someone had thought it out. And the worry I’ve got generally is that we’re really just in the first two weeks of Trump’s power, and we’ve got another four years of this. But looking at it, it seems almost to be like a ‘‘children’s crusade’’. So you’ve not only got these bizarre suggestions over Gaza, Panama and Greenland, you’ve got Elon Musk and his youngsters going through confidential payment files. You’ve got Trump trying to overturn the American Constitution when it comes to birthright citizenship. He’s signing all these executive orders, most of them wreaking chaos. [On Thursday] everybody in the CIA was offered eight months’ pay if they’ll resign. [Then] it was the Department of Justice winding down. So Trump’s destroying the US government. This is doing much more damage to America than the Chinese or the Russians could ever hope to achieve. And Australia in all this? Our classic approach for the last 85 years was emblematically expressed by Harold Holt; ‘‘All the way with LBJ,’’ with only Gough Whitlam quibbling, saying, ‘‘It’s all very well to say ‘All the way with LBJ’ so long as you know where LBJ is going.’’ Now that Australia can see where LBJ’s successor, Trump, is going, at what point is it feasible to say ‘‘We ain’t going to the dump with Trump?’’ Well, there could be no easy extrication. Remember, we are caught up with the US in the AUKUS defence arrangement. But there must be plenty of people in Canberra wondering about that defence arrangement right now, right? And if I had been Anthony Albanese, after the last election I would have set up a royal commission to investigate AUKUS to find out exactly what it entails. That would then give you the exit route to get out because you’d hope that the royal commission would find that this is not a fully fleshedout agreement, and not something that Australia should be bound up to. And now with the election of Trump, that just adds to our disenchantment with AUKUS. But surely, we are bound to America on the grounds that we would be a lonely outpost without US protection? Well, we have no guarantee that we actually will have American protection. Remember, we’ve asked for American assistance on a couple of occasions. One was at the time of Timor-Leste in the ’90s and Clinton did not come to our assistance. Similarly, in the 1960s at the time of the Malaysia confrontation – with Malaysia, UK, New Zealand and Australia supporting Malaysia against Indonesia – the Americans wouldn’t help out. So the Americans do not have a good record on helping the allies. We have a brilliant record in always supporting the Americans, but it hasn’t been reciprocated, right? And what a number of people in Australia have argued over the years is that we need to think about how we would stand on our own two feet. Ideally, yes. But when Jim Killen was about to become defence minister in 1975, he told BBC listeners that Australia’s defence forces combined ‘‘would be unable to protect Botany Bay against an enemy on a hot Sunday afternoon’’. Isn’t it still inconceivable that Australia could, without America, defend ourselves against any halfserious attack from anyone, bar stroppy New Zealanders? Sure, but then you’ve got to ask yourself, why would somebody want to invade this country? Maybe Indonesia, perhaps seeking to get more land, but the usually cited threat, the Chinese, won’t invade. They already own part of the country. They’re not going to damage their own investments by invading. And what the Americans under Trump would do in either case, who knows? Is it fair to say that while most of the rest of us are appalled by Trump’s actions, you’re nothing less than fascinated? I am absolutely fascinated by Trump. As I say, we’re only two weeks into a four-year administration. Who knows where we will be in four years? Do you think the American state will still be standing? Oh, the US state will still stand, but it’s going to be badly battered.

Musk and the dodgy DOGE only want to cut foreign aid to line his obscenely overflowing pockets.

By-elections held in Prahran and Werribee this weekend. The sitting Greens member in Prahran has conceded, handing the seat to the Libs. Labor has squandered a nearly 10% lead in Werribee. Count has not finished, but there is a difference of only 1% between Labor and Libs on a 2pp basis. There were 12 candidates contesting the seat.

Only had 1 Chiko roll in the last 10 years. Loved it. The fish and chips (photo above) we have every second Friday.

One of our favorites is fish and chips with a giant potato cake ( or scallop depending where you are from). Here is dinner from last Friday. Tartare sauce in the flake. That's a 12" dinner plate for size. When I read the OP, I recalled the photo of the Clampets at dinner, and Jed saying, "Bless this varmint we're about to eat, it ain't much, but at least it's meat."

Jack Watkins · Andrew Coyne, a highly respected Canadian columnist with the Globe and Mail, pulls no punches on the incoming US administration: “Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies. The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please. There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero. The first six months will be a time of maximum peril. NATO must from this moment be considered effectively obsolete, without the American security guarantee that has always been its bedrock. We may see new incursions by Russia into Europe – the poor Ukrainians are probably done for, but now it is the Baltics and the Poles who must worry – before the Europeans have time to organize an alternative. China may also accelerate its Taiwanese ambitions. At home, Mr. Trump will be moving swiftly to consolidate his power. Some of this will be institutional – the replacement of tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trumpian loyalists. But some of it will be … atmospheric. At some point someone – a company whose chief executive has displeased him, a media critic who has gotten under his skin – will find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the Trump administration. It might not be so crude as a police arrest. It might just be a little regulatory matter, a tax audit, something like that. They will seek the protection of the courts, and find it is not there. The judges are also Trump loyalists, perhaps, or too scared to confront him. Or they might issue a ruling, and find it has no effect – that the administration has called the basic bluff of liberal democracy: the idea that, in the crunch, people in power agree to be bound by the law, and by its instruments the courts, the same as everyone else. Then everyone will take their cue. Executives will line up to court him. Media organizations, the large ones anyway, will find reasons to be cheerful. Of course, in reality things will start to fall apart fairly quickly. The huge across-the-board tariffs he imposes will tank the world economy. The massive deficits, fueled by his ill-judged tax policies – he won’t replace the income tax, as he promised, but will fill it with holes – and monetized, at his direction, by the Federal Reserve, will ignite a new round of inflation. Most of all, the insane project of deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants – finding them, rounding them up and detaining them in hundreds of internment camps around the country, probably for years, before doing so – will consume his administration. But by then it will be too late. We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses in any event. They were not able to see Mr. Trump for what he was before: why should that change? Would they not, rather, be further coarsened by the experience of seeing their neighbours dragged off by the police, or the military, further steeled to the necessity of doing “tough things” to “restore order?” Some won’t, of course. But they will find in time that the democratic levers they might once have pulled to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power. It will seem easier at first to try to change things from within. Then it will be easier not to change things. All of this will wash over Canada in various ways – some predictable, like the flood of refugees seeking escape from the camps; some less so, like the coarsening of our own politics, the debasement of morals and norms by politicians who have discovered there i All my life I have been an admirer of the United States and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them.”

Must have had a bad night last night. In bed just after midnight, the step counter on my watch read 00000. Woke up this morning and it read 00174. And with appliances I wear, I can't sleepwalk.

Ask the Vic government.